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An anonymous reader writes "The large print giveth, the small print taketh away. Microsoft, which recently laid off 1400 employees, is now claiming that some of those lucky schmoes were inadvertently overpaid on their severance package. A letter from the company, which was subsequently circulated on the internet, states: 'We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to you.' Microsoft has confirmed the authenticity of the letter, but it's not known what the amounts in question are, or how many of the 1400 were affected."Update: 02/24 14:00 GMT by T: VinylRecords writes "Well, now Microsoft has recanted, saying that the situation has resulted in unfortunate amounts of bad press and public relations. 'This was a mistake on our part,' said a Microsoft spokesman in an e-mailed statement. 'We should have handled this situation in a more thoughtful manner.'"

"A letter from the company, which was subsequently circulated on the internet, states: 'We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to you.' Microsoft has confirmed the authenticity of the letter, but it's not known what the amounts in question are, or how many of the 1400 were affected."

That's one of the reasons. If the overpayment is small enough, it wouldn't be worth the bad PR to sue their former workers. They also have a poor chance of winning in a trial by jury- people are going to be biased for the workers. Besides, asking for the money politely doesn't stop them from filing legal proceedings later- in fact, judges prefer you to try to fix issues before filing papers.

Earth, in the nation of the United States. Trial by jury is a constitutional right assured by the 7th amendment. "In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."

To get a bench trial (one where the judge makes the ruling), both sides must agree to it. The default is actually trial by jury. Companies generally prefer to use bench trial to avoid jury bias and speed up proceedings, but either side has an absolute right to let it go to a jury trial. The only exception is when the suit requires an equity judgement (non-monetary awards, for example an injunction or specific performance).

In this case there is no issue of equity, so if either side refused to waive a trial by jury it would go to a jury trial. And in this case the defendant would be a fool to waive it, unless they have something signed by MS with the amount they were paid. It would be an extremely rare jury that wouldn't tend to helping the guy out of work, especially in liberal Washington.

Well, they're probably SOL regardless (unless the sum involved was absurd.) They chose to terminate the employee, they chose the terms, they asked for a promise to not sue (for overtime, unused vacation, discrimination, etc) in exchange for some cash. They paid, and now think they paid the wrong amount: good luck winning this one in court.

They probably won't need luck if the following happened. Paperwork is drawn up stating that the terminated employee gets paid $2,000. Supervisor and employee sign off on that sum. Retard typing in the info for the check keys in $20,000 instead of $2,000.

The employee can't possibly think that he/she actually deserves the extra $18,000 after agreeing to the original sum.

As I said, "absurd" numbers are easy to fix, but even $18K is tough to clawback from, for example, an employee with a five year work history. Heck, when I quit my last job, a nice lady from HR emailed me asking about unused vacation days: I picked a number, and it was close to $18K pre-tax.

Dollar numbers seem so important in entry level positions, but, at the higher levels, $BIGNUM amounts are used to smooth over the issues that arise in terminations.

If the paperwork and payment match, then MS probably will have to eat the loss, but as you say, if the paperwork and payment are different, then it's in the ex-employee's best interest to pay back the overage with no fuss.

So we think that MS is so backwards that a human typed the lettered, or entered data in a form letter. For 1400 employees. We don't think that these letters were generated using, for instance, a datbase query that picked all employees terminated on a certain day, subtracted the hire data to the current date, multiplied by a factor representing the severance pay per time period for the job function, then added any additional severance based on job function. From these calculated values, a letter would be

The whole reason managers exist is to maintain sanity: if a company reaches the point that it is terminating an employee without the employee's direct manager reviewing the documents involved, it deserves everything it gets.

You can chose to be either an ongoing, profitable business, or a bizarre digital art-form, but if you chose the later, do not be surprised when you lose money in the real world.

The way a court would view this would have almost entirely to do with what had (or hadn't) been agreed on beforehand. If their employment contract or severance paperwork specified a dollar amount either explicitly or implicitly as a percentage of salary, then they'll need to pay the money back. It is clearly an error in that case, and you agreed to a different amount. It'd be no different than if in a store you accidentally hand a cashier a $100 bill instead of a $10 one for a $10 item. They don't get to ke

If the ammount communicated differs from the ammount paid (which is almost always the case in these situations, regarding of the company) then Microsoft has little chances of losing it in court. They also have few chances of having to go to court in the first place, as you wouldn't want to have that in your background when looking for a new job, especially considering that Microsoft is likely the next employer for many of these employees, given that it's the biggest employer in the Seattle area and the two

If it's less than $100K, the company will not take it to court. A good lawyer will merely hint that she plans to discover information on overtime, H1Bs, and discretionary bonuses. When the company realizes it has to explain to a jury that one senior developer earns $100K/yr, while another gets $400K, it STFU pretty fast, and eats the few thou it paid by mistake.

You think MS cares about bad press anymore? In my recent memory... The Zune date bug, the failure of many 360s, DRM schemes in everything, the disaster that was Vista, and the meh responses from the media for any of their new endeavors.

Sure, Microsoft has next to no credibilty in this crowd. Are we past most people thinking that Windows IS the computer? I don't think so chums.

It may not be as crucial in this economy, but every company has to hire. This is bad press to future prospective employees. And the kind of talented IT professionals that any successful software company must employ are just the type to read this type of press.

They may have a substantial market share, but they've created an environment where customers expect constan

They are unable to write a correct severance package. In my entire career, I have never has an experience like this.

I have.

Even though they have tons of cash in the bank, they risk bad publicity to get the overpayment back

Why do people keep assuming that corporations have free will? No officer of a publicly held company is in a position to say "oh well, it's only $1 million, we have $50 billion in the bank, no big deal."

IANAL but i'd expect the fees related to going after individuals who refuse to give back the money probably costs more than just letting them keep it.
they'll probably just write it off and note that ex-employee's name in the HR database as a "do not hire"

I'm not a lawyer either, but in my experiences in California, this is tricky--our HR people told us it wasn't legal to keep a list of people marked "do not hire." No, I don't know why, or whether they were correct.

In the past, Microsoft has settled fines by giving away the fine value in money-off vouchers for schools to buy cheaper copies of Windows (in areas where the schools had tended to use the competition's systems, naturally).

These workers should do the same thing. Print up a few dozen vouchers for $100 off a week's contracting rate.

The letter asks for repayments to be sent to Fargo, North Dakota. If I got a letter purporting to be from my former company asking me to send money to a totally different state from that where I had worked and that where the company was based, I'd be more than a bit suspicious. This is apparently legit, but I wonder if any employees thought it was a scam (a scam by other than Microsoft, anyway)...

It has recently come to my attention that I have needlessly paid licensing fees for multiple OEM licenses relating to use your Windows computer operating system (hereafter referred to as "malware").

I have upon many occassions purchased a computer from a vendor who is in the unfortunate position of being a Microsoft partner. Microsoft has continually discouraged its OEM partners from shipping "naked" (sans operating system) PCs. This has led to the situation where I, as both a consumer and business purchaser of laptop, desktop and server class computer hardware, often find it difficult to avoid paying licensing fees relating to your Malware when I order a new system. This is troubling since I neither want to run, nor to purchase a license enabling me to run your malware.

Furthermore, I have suffered financially for many years as a result of your Malware being installed on the majority of desktop computers. Many of my web site customers are infected with a specific bundled component of your malware ("Internet Explorer"). Supporting this doubles the development and maintainance cost of my companies web site.

I ask that you refund my overpayment on unwanted licenses for your malware and make a further payment in respect of losses incurred by my company due to the "Internet Explorer" component of your malware. The net amount you owe to myself is $60,000 payable by check or money order within 14 days.

Either by cost, value, or reference, all versions of windows were overpaid by consumers... what about returning those overpayments? Probably that will put around enough cash to end the current world economy problems, as a bonus.

This sort of thing happens all the time, banks overpay, payroll overpays, people overpay. It happens, if you get called out on it, you are legally and morally obligated to return the money(personally I tend to point out the mistake if I see it being made as well, but that's me).

Is it a little petty to be going after terminated employees if the amounts are fairly trivial? Yeah. Do we know that the amounts are trivial? No. Remember an average of an extra grand per employee is 1.4 million dollars, not exactly pocket change, even to Microsoft.

Companies do this all the time, it's part interacting with human beings who can and do make mistakes. If anyone other than Microsoft had done this, the article wouldn't have been written.

Prove it!Let Microsoft prove it in a court of law that it overpaid them.Just because a BIG corporate demands money from you doesn't mean you have to bend over.If i claim Microsoft wasted my money due to faults in its XP, would Microsoft bend over and pay me? NOThey will regretfully inform me of their inability to pay and thank me for my comments.So, i have to sue them.Similarly, each such employee should send a simple regret letter expressing their deep regret at microsoft and stating clearly their personal policies prevent them from paying. Neither confirm nor deny you owe them money. State POLICY.Simple.Microsoft will spend 10x times the money on lawyers to recover the money from you.

were one of the unlucky ones laid off from work, I would really like to say the words, "So sue me," and not return the money. But, to take the ethical high ground and pay back the money is really the best course of action because it makes you look like the good guy. You will be more apt to be considered for rehire. I dislike M$ intensely but I won't stoop to ethics violations.... including pirating M$ software. Returning the money only makes you smell like a rose. I know that those laid off are suffering, but, at least you aren't alone. The suffering is widespread and getting worse by the week. The only silver lining to this cloud is that the government needs to pay attention to the plight of the working class and middle class because the adverse economic conditions are so widespread. The unemployed are no longer a statistical minority, and while sad, will actually help in the long run.

Most fonts keep numbers monospaced. Other characters in the fonts may have variable widths, but almost all fonts keep numbers the same width. This has to do with lining numbers up in columns when doing reports.

I measure about six pixels per number. The zip code is about 30 pixels wide (6 pixels x 5 digits = 30).

The blanked out area is 42 pixels wide. Now some of that is two spaces and a decimal point. Spaces look about 4 pixels and a decimal point is probably 2 or 3 pixels (it's hard to tell since the document was scanned in anti-aliased). That leaves 42 pixels - 3 pixels (decimal) - 8 pixels (spaces). About 32 pixels, or about 5 digits. Put 2 on one side of the decimal, and that leaves a number between $100 and $999 as an overpayment.

Actually, this sounds about right for a math error of this type, and isn't too unusual based upon the complexities of this type of payout which includes includes considering the base salary, bonus payouts, unused vacations, unused sick leave, years in service, ranking, etc. Add in some government specific stuff, 401K vestments, stock plans, and who knows what else, and you can see how complex this can get.

Still, it's hard to understand all of this: Microsoft laid off 1,400 people. If each of them received what seemed to be about $1000 in overpay, you're talking about $1.4 million dollars at the very most. If the average mistake was $300 and only 1/2 the people got that, you're talking about $200,000 (a more likely, but still quite large sum).

Heck, the paper work alone to send out these letters and to track them probably costs Microsoft more -- not to mention the bad will and publicity it'll generate.

There's nothing at all accidental about it. It's a cruel joke perpetrated by cruel people.

Yea, definitely. I bet those guys over in payroll were all like "Hahah, wouldn't it be hilarious if we paid those losers that got fired more than we should? We'd give the company even more bad press, and if we're lucky we might even get fired ourselves!"

Usually, the "official" termination date occurs at the end of the severance period. Most companies retain the "right" to recall you from your enforced sabbatical during that period.

This is not accurate. Severance is a post-employment payment and does not occur until after your termination of employment. As such, companies do not retain the right to recall an employee to work. They do on occasion enfore certain other rights during severance such as non-compete (where allowed, and sometimes even where not allowed), non-disparagement, non-solicitation, etc.
Assuming Microsoft has completed all payments to individuals and now wants to recoup, they are likely going to have a hard time doing so as it will require the willing agreement of the person who got the payment - and how likely is that. Without voluntary repayment, they will have no recourse other than to sue, and that would likely end up being a big drain on resources, cost more than it would recoup and big a huge PR disaster.

This just sounds symptomatic of a bureaucracy, which any sufficiently large company becomes over time when it passes a magic threshold of size, complexity and number of employees. It used to happen regularly when I was in the military, and to me and/or my troops on a number of occasions. (Started to become much more rare when the Defense Finance and Accounting Service - DFAS- automated in the, what, mid-nineties?) Sometimes I would catch the error first and try to repay it, only to be told I'd have to wait until the "system caught up." So, I'd just bank the money, then wait until I'd either be surprised by a zeroed pay-check, an angry memo, or both. So, then I'd go back to the "disbursing" office and straighten it out by repaying the overage now that the "system" is prepared to receive it. A bureaucracy is neither evil, good, nor even conscious; it just seems that way. Who said, "never ascribe to evil what can be explained by stupidity"? They call bureaucracies "mindless" for a reason.

Guys used to have mysterious allotments coming out of their LES' now and then, with little recourse to find out other than some pay clerk telling you to do a "pay inquiry". Over-payments, no-pay-due's, all kinds of random stuff that was just inevitable in a paper-and-red-tape bureaucracy.

Guys used to have mysterious allotments coming out of their LES' now and then, with little recourse to find out other than some pay clerk telling you to do a "pay inquiry". Over-payments, no-pay-due's, all kinds of random stuff that was just inevitable in a paper-and-red-tape bureaucracy.

Ah yes, I remember the "good old days" of my first enlistment (87-93) how we used to joke about the "Lies and Exaggerations Statement". I never had any expenses beyond beer and cigarettes, so the "surprises" never hurt me, but I watched a lot of married guys with kids go through hell. It was so regularly F'd up that our company commander at Ft Hood had to borrow three bucks from me for lunch off base because he'd loaned all his spare money to a guy whose LES had come up ZERO with a wife and screaming baby (or was it a screaming wife and baby?) to contend with. I suppose DFAS fixed a lot of it, but I never paid much attention on my second active duty period (2001-2003)... I just came home and found a bunch of unspent money in my account.

Yeah, my father was in the Navy and had this kind of thing happen all the time. Once even the other way around, where DFAS paid much less than normal and "caught up" with next month's payment while my parents were scrambling around going WTF.

I hear of this kind of thing much less frequently nowadays though. I joined myself and haven't had problems, although our Chief of the Boat managed to run afoul of a DFAS screwup.

It's not just the military. A professor I worked with in college once started getting his entire annual salary on each monthly check. It took him and the department accountant three months of arguing with the university to get it straightened out.

A bureaucracy is neither evil, good, nor even conscious; it just seems that way. Who said, "never ascribe to evil what can be explained by stupidity"? They call bureaucracies "mindless" for a reason.

I think one could make a good argument for bureaucracies exhibiting consciousness. I think that they long ago reached the point that computerized AI will reach in the future, but with humans and rules as their brains. It's always fascinating to see a bureaucracy do something that no one within it wants or understands, and it happens more than one might expect.

I don't know why you got "trolled" for this. While I could quibble slightly with the word "joke" (cavalier neglect would be my take on it), when you refer to this as cruel, you're spot-on.

I tend to be a non-admirer of Microsoft in general, but I don't think this is a uniquely Microsoft thing. It is, rather, the same greed and cruelty that seems to have overtaken much of corporate America. At such times one wants to believe in karma, divine retribution, or perhaps pursuit by the Furies.

How is this "greedy" or "cruel" at all? It's roughly the same thing as being given too much change at a store. There are about a half-dozen posts above yours that talk about the government (or is it "greedy corporate American government"?) making exactly the same type of mistake.

Nice that you pointed out that Microsoft is not the first and only company or organization to ever make a payroll error. But where did you come up with the anti-"big evil corporate America! Waaah!" jab, based on this event?

Being a cog doesn't mean you are not treated well. I change the oil in my car regularly, and yet it is just a cog in my life, easily replaceable. The reason Microsoft treats its employees well isn't because they actually care about their happiness, it's because it makes better business sense for the employees to be happy. They work harder that way. Cogs in a wheel.

A good company will be one that treats me as a partner, not as a coding machine. Such companies exist, and I've worked for them, even if they are rare (but becoming less so!). Even in manufacturing, companies like that exist. One example is Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation. [srcreman.com] It is an employee owned company. The management doesn't consider itself better than the rest, they work as a team, and they don't have layoffs. They have an open system, where the employees actually understand what management is doing, instead of just being told to do it. If someone is having trouble doing they job, instead of firing them, they get taught how to do better. Maybe they don't have free massages for the workers, but the workers are treated like human beings, who have judgement and capabilities, and they get their fair share.

I suggest reading "The Great Game of Business." Although the book is targeted towards management, it completely changed my idea of what a company can be, and it's not a free xbox.

There's a difference. As an intern, you responsibilites end at the end of your internship. So no one is cracking the whip over your head or forces you to come to work on Saturday (otherwise you won't want to join after you graduate). Once you become an FTE (full-time employee) all of that will change. For one, there will be "stack ranking" where you're ranked against your peers according to the perception that management has of you. If you don't pay attention to "visibility" -- you won't get promoted, no ma

I guess you must have some unique skills, or are a leader in your field, or your resume is so good that it would also open doors and guarantee you a new job without references. Pretty confident for this economic environment, huh?

References are people you know who have agreed to do just that, not random people at places you used to work.

Because of the fear of lawsuits, the standard policy at almost every company (and 99.9% of large companies) is that the only question they will answer is "when did ____ work at ____?"

In addition, if this sort of overpayment did bring legal action against the ex-employee, any mention of such a matter to a new prospective employer would really open up the old employer to nasty lawsuits.

When I quit at Amazon, they actually offered me a legal document (optional, of course) promising them that I wouldn't sue for giving references. If you sign it, they'll allow your manager/coworker to give references, if not they only gave name, rank, and serial number. If you think the references would be good you sign it, if not you don't. I expect to see more companies doing that in the future.

I've interviewed dozens of people, and never once did I call someone for a reference. It just didn't seem like it would be important or useful. Other companies might be different, but I'm sure I could get a job without a reference from my most recent employer.

Incidentally, you don't actually need to be at the top of your field, you just need to be able to produce enough to be worth what you want to get paid. If you can do that, then you will have no problem finding a job. Why would anyone want to pay

Generally you do have an obligation to return someone else's property that accidentally came into your possession. You'd be guilty of theft if you knowingly kept it despite knowing that it came into your possession by accident; if you had reason to believe it was legitimately yours, you could plead not guilty to theft, but would probably still have to return it if a court determined it wasn't rightfully yours (i.e. not paid as part of a legitimate contract, or given as a gift). In this case if the employees had signed paperwork specifying a particular amount of money, and they got a larger amount, they would have trouble arguing that they believed it to be anything but an accidental overpayment. I guess you could try arguing that it was a legitimate gift from Microsoft, but I doubt that would succeed.

I don't have any strong evidence, but it sounded more to me like their methods for calculating what a person should be paid was just discovered to be faulty. If it really were some sort of entry error into their payment systems it seems like it should be one or two very isolated cases. When combined with that line that "some laid off employees were also undercompensated," it paints a picture for me of a broken formula. The fact that they call it an "administrative error" rather than "accounting error" also points me in that direction.

As such, these people probably agreed to the package that they ultimately received. If Microsoft actually had any right to collect the over-payments, they probably would have said so in the letter to ensure greater initial compliance--even if they ultimately had no intention to go after the money with the lawyers.

Unsolicited packages that come in the mail addressed to you are yours to keep, free of any compensation or request for return. How is this different? Especially when there is no longer any contractural relationship between the parties (and they went out of their way to sign papers to that effect). Any over-payment, in that case, IS a gift. Also, as a gift, if it's below a certain amount ($13,000.00 [wikipedia.org], it's tax-free.

And no, "Gifts from certain parties will always be taxed for U.S. Federal income tax purpos

I agree. This happens all the time. Accountants and HR people are just human, and they make mistakes. Sure, the systems are mostly automated, but when there are exceptional events or conditions change (this WAS Microsoft's first massive layoff), mistakes happen, and people pay it back all the time. The same way if they underpay you, they'll give it back.

Now, the only difference is those are people who got fired...so unless there's a legally binding agreement over this package (like, if something was signed.

You know, I sometimes have the feeling that if some megacorporation figured out a way to make a profit torturing puppies to death, people like you would say, "Well, you know, they're just honoring their obligations to the shareholders!"

You know, I sometimes have the feeling that if some megacorporation figured out a way to make a profit torturing puppies to death, people like you would say, "Well, you know, they're just honoring their obligations to the shareholders!"

The sad thing is that the people who said that would be correct. In fact, there probably is a corporation out there right now making a profit from torturing puppies (probably a cosmetics company).

Corporations have a legal obligation to make a profit. They do not have a legal obligation to do the right thing. In fact, most seem to think that the legal obligation to turn a profit trumps the legal obligation to follow the law (in nearly every circumstance, if the chance of getting caught * the fine it would have to pay < the ROI from breaking the law, the law gets broken).

Modern corporations need severe public oversight. Or we could nix the public stock market and finally get the Supreme Court to announce "Corporations are not People". I don't think I'll live to see either of these things come to pass.

You are correct in all but one minor point. They do not have a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the shareholder's profit margins. They have a fiduciary responsibility. This does not necessarily mean 'financial'. It actually means that they have a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the shareholder. I will concede that it is generally assumed that by default the best thing for the shareholder is to make as much profit as possible, but it does not have to be the case. For example, most HOAs are in fact corporations. The board of most HOAs must follow their fiduciary responsibility which is assumed to be making the living conditions as good as possible. It is not assumed to be making as much profit as possible.

And when a large group of us applied for unemployment, we got more than we should have.

After a few months, we all got a letter from the unemployment office wanting the extra money back. Good luck with that, except I still owe them money and the debt never goes away.

If I ever get laid off again, I can't draw a penny until the original amount is paid off out of what I will draw if I end up unemployed again.

That's because it is the government. When I worked for Uncle Sam, if he overpaid you he simply took it out of the next check you got. OTOH, if he underpaid you you also got it on the next check with no hassles.

Private industry is a bit different. years ago I got one of those letters from a previous employer. I eventually got around to sending them a check. A few months letter I got a check from them saying they had underpaid me. Go figure...

MS, OTHO, may be doing this not so much as to collect the money but to avoid lawsuits. If someone discovered they used different ways to calculate severance for the same agreements they could wind up in court. This way, they can at least say "We messed up, but once we found out we tried to fix it." Even if the employees don't pay it back and MS doesn't go after them at least they can show thwy tried; and fixed underpayments as well.

This of course is conjecture on my part; but my experience is it is not uncommon for companies to mess up severance payments. Even when I left Uncle Sam it took several months for me to get a "final" check that zeroed me out.

As far as I'm concerned when it comes to severance, the question of whether I should return money comes down to one question: is the amount paid to me in excess of what the documents I received when I left said I was to be paid? When I leave, I confirm with the company rep that the amount those documents give is accurate and we both sign things off. After that, their miscalculations are No Longer My Problem. They've agreed that's the amount they're to pay me, I expect them to abide by their agreement just a